


and the needle moves

by asperityblue



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Did I mention angst, I suppose there's a bit of angsty fluff, M/M, Please Don't Kill Me, major character deaths, no seriously it's all angst, yes deaths plural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-17 18:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2319086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asperityblue/pseuds/asperityblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is infuriatingly persistent, and Sherlock is tired and wants to get back to his too-empty flat. So he looks at the door, the table, his sleeves, then straight into her eyes, and tells her the truth.<br/>"I'm in love with a dead man."<br/>It makes her shut up, at least.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and the needle moves

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I apologize. Enjoy!

"Sherlock." He looks at her as she inches marginally closer to him on the tiny table. They are in the very corner of a small cafe, the nervous woman opposite him obviously eager for approval. He looks at her and thinks, _dull_.

"I was wondering, well I mean not wondering, but um, just thought, um, would you kind of, well,"

He takes a sip of his coffee ( _scalding, tasteless_ ) and pretends he doesn't remember sharing a cup with someone else every afternoon. He sees him everywhere, but it's been three years and he's almost used to the feeling of losing his sanity. He looks at the clock, and back to the lady, who carries on talking nervously as if with a need to stuff the silence full of tiresome, unnecessary words. His John never needed words.

"What I'm trying to say is, well—" He cuts her off, almost desperate to get away from her useless babbling. "Molly, I do not have any wish to participate in any event or activity with you, particularly not something so mundane as watching a movie."

John would have told him off for that, would have frowned in disapproval and made him apologize for being too harsh. He closes his eyes, almost hearing it. "Sorry," he adds belatedly. Her bottom lip wobbles slightly and he doesn't really care.

"Why not? I mean, I know I'm not exactly impressive, and you're obviously so much more... you. And of course you'd be able to get whoever you were interested in but I thought since we've known each other for a few months now and you've—"

"I can't," he says, flatly, and it's more a physical incapability than anything else, "It's not you, it's me." Isn't that what they said in those dreadful movies? He looks at his right hand and feels John's, two of his around one of Sherlock's, thumb running over his knuckles to soothe his sulk at being made to watch such horrors. Sherlock never told him he was never really annoyed.

"Is there someone else? We could go just as friends, if you like, but over the time I've known you I haven't noticed anybody..."

She is infuriatingly persistent, and Sherlock is tired and wants to get back to his too-empty flat. So he looks at the door, the table, his sleeves, then straight into her eyes, and tells her the truth.

"I'm in love with a dead man."

It makes her shut up, at least.

\--

He closes his eyes when he walks up the front steps, where John had once stopped him and laced their fingers together and pulled them up to his chest while bells rang through the night and children laughed and the vast majority of London cheered and an absolutely ridiculous amount of crimes were committed and he'd stood on his tiptoes to whisper, "Merry Christmas, Sherlock" against cold, smiling lips.

He unlocks the door, slams it shut behind him, and ignores Mrs Hudson when she quietly says, "Sherlock?" with equal measures affection and exasperation and sadness, the way she had years ago, near the beginning of John and Sherlock, when she'd found them lying across the bottom stairs, John collapsed and snoring from fatigue after a particularly intense case, Sherlock with his eyes as wide open as they would go, yearning ( _hurting_ ), as he filed away the smallest details of the man in front of him. He'd raised his head a fraction, shaken his head at his landlady. Mrs Hudson had given him a disapproving look and left her boys alone.

They'd woken up late the next afternoon tangled in each other, and Sherlock's heart had ached with longing, and he'd started attempting to pull John's limbs off his body in feeble tugs until John stilled him with a warm hand to the back of the neck, yawned, mumbled, "idiot," and pulled Sherlock down to touch their lips together, then fell back asleep, and that had been that.

Then came the inevitable Talk, of course, but Sherlock grinned like a fool ( _almost_ ) all the way through it until John had ascertained that yes, he wanted everything, monogamy and forever and yes, he was sure and yes, he may or may not have been pining for John for the previous six months.

It's funny ( _it's really not_ ), he thinks, splayed out on the sofa, John had assumed ( _wrong, wrong, all wrong_ ) he'd be at Sherlock's side long enough for him to eventually get bored of them. For all Sherlock was willing to have John forever, he'd only gotten two ( _amazing, brilliant, fantastic_ ) years. He eats, drinks, walks to the bare downstairs bedroom, completely refusing to acknowledge the presence of either of the ( _their_ ) armchairs, or his ( _their_ ) bedroom, or any of their mugs or their catastrophic kitchen or their cushions or—

He presses his face into a pillow that smells nothing of John ( _obviously_ ) and falls, flailing, into sleep.

\--

He dreams the same dream he has dreamt every night for the last 1,138 nights.

It's awfully tiring, a strange thing to be said of a dream.

It's _that_ alley again, late evening moonlight lighting up the ugly grey floor in shards of white, John just a few steps ahead of him, the criminal just a few more, and Sherlock knows what is coming next, he _knows_. The criminal stops in his track, turning suddenly, and John narrowly avoids careening straight into him. John falls forwards anyway. Sherlock _knows_ what is happening and what has happened, knows it like the biting wind in his eyes, and the criminal turns and starts running again, and Sherlock _knows_ and desperately wants to stop stop stop _stop running_ but he goes on, because this is a nightmare, not a second chance. He'd thought John had tripped on a rock or his shoelaces or something equally ludicrous, had thought John trusted him to catch the criminal, had thought John was right behind him, had thought _wrong_.

John's last word ( _just one_ ) is not difficult to hear. It's not mumbled from a deathbed or sobbed out through a crappy telephone.

He yells, "Sherlock!" One sharp, pained, loud bark of a last word.

Finally Sherlock stops at the end of the long alley and this is when he's allowed to run back. Only now, when no matter how fast he runs he never has a chance. He reaches him, kneels over him, sees the knife shoved crudely between his ribs into his lung, sees the injury that could only ever be fatal, sees the blood of the man he loves, sees his own loud tears drip onto John's cheeks and slide silently down his face. John _knows_ and doesn't say any more. John closes his eyes and nods, slowly, the slightest nudge downwards, and Sherlock opens his mouth to speak, to ask and—

—And that's when he wakes up, because that's when John dies. No second chances.

\--

There are numbers on the ceiling of his mind palace, counting the days and nights between John's death and his eventual one.

He'd made a stupid promise to John, ages ago, when he'd first noticed his mechanical heart was no longer in his chest but curled in an overly squishy armchair engrossed in some idiotic Victorian mystery novel and incredibly, frighteningly human. Sherlock had stood up and folded himself into the armchair that really was far too small for two grown men, and mumbled "you're not allowed to die" into the space behind John's left ear.

" _What_? What have you done now?"

Sherlock kept mumbling, somersaulting words, feeling them fumble over his tongue and rush out messily, unable to stop now that he'd started.

"What do you—"

"Say you won't die," into John's temple.

"Sherlock—"

"You can't just leave me here," where John's jaw met his neck.

"Why would I—"

He took the novel, flung it across the room, grabbed John's hand and pressed it against his chest, into the cave in his body, as if trying to pull John behind his ribs into the empty space. Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut and mumbled, "John, _John_ , if you die I very possibly probably will follow you."

He opened them when John got up, turned around and pushed his palms against Sherlock's shoulders, pinning him against the cushioned back of the chair and fixing him with a concerned but determined stare. "No you won't."

Sherlock had tried to speak but John was firm and unyielding and just continued right over him. "I'm not going to let you do anything stupid, alright? You're tired and I don't know what's gotten you into this state, but I'm fine, you're fine, it's all fine. If I happen to ever not be fine, you're not going to just let go because I'm not around. You'll move on, do the Work. Promise me you'll be okay, Sherlock."

"John I _can't_."

"Promise me you'll try."

And Sherlock nodded and John smiled softly and held him against his heart.

Sherlock looks up now, at the numbers scratched into the ceiling and the back of his eyelids.

1139, 1140, 1141 ( _John please_ ), 1142, 1143 ( _come back_ ), 1144, 1145 ( _or let me leave_ ), 1146 ( _John_ ), 1147 ( _John_ ), 1148 ( _John_ ).

He's not okay, but he's _tried_. He's spent more time with John's grave than he spent with the man alive, and he's exhausted.

( _Just let me let go._ )

\--

Sherlock lives another 16 months, hurtles into death head first, like he does everything else ( _crime scenes, love, grief_ ).

\--

He'd never expected to live a long, prosperous ( _really?_ ) life, but sometimes ( _beforebeforebefore_ ) he'd found himself absently muttering nonsense to John about retiring and Sussex and beekeeping.

Sometimes John was _even actually in the room_ to hear it. And when he wasn't, he was out buying the milk ( _breathing_ ) or at the surgery ( _breathing_ ), not under several pounds of dirt ( _why isn't he breathing?_ ).

Sherlock had thought these thoughts of longevity ( _luck, essentially_ ) while thinking of John. For once, the Work was not the main interest, and reducing the Work therefore resulted in more John. And when John had— ( _dissolveddissipateddisintegrateddisappeared_ —) gone, Sherlock had thrown himself quite literally at the Work. ( _Lestrade had been trapped between sympathy and a sort of weary resignedness at the many wooden fragments that were the sad remains of his office door and desk_ ).

In the early days, the bad days ( _they're all bad_ ), he'd thought about killing himself. He'd thought about it like he used to think about committing murder or starting the drugs again or sprinting nowhere until his body broke down or putting the eyeballs in the jam jar.

Briefly, and then swept away with a "John _really_ wouldn't like it".

And he'd destroyed the eyeballs ( _and most other things. He couldn't bear to touch anything remotely John though_ ) within a week of John's gone-ness anyway.

\--

When it comes, it feels almost right. The circumstances are very much the same ( _criminal, alleyway, late evening_ ), so much so everything seems surreal ( _circular_ ). John had died with his gun in his hand and a knife in the lungs. Sherlock dies with a knife ( _not his, admittedly_ ) in his hand and a bullet to the heart.

In the moment before the trigger is pulled and he realizes he's actually gone and gotten himself killed, he says, "oh."

In the moment after, as the bullet spins/skids/slices through the air, he has just about enough time to feel indignant that his last word should be something so meaningless.

So when it breaches his skin, he completes the circle.

 

Softly, gently, quietly, Sherlock whispers, "John."

**Author's Note:**

>  _“circle me_  
>  and the needle moves gracefully  
> back and forth,  
> if my heart was a compass   
> you'd be north”  
> —owl city.


End file.
